Sunday, March 07, 2004
Creavity Run Horribly Amok
As a teen I was drawn to the comic book culture like a moth to the flame. That's not to say that I was drawn to the people in that culture, but most everything I could burn hours and money on I could find in a comic book shop: role playing games, miniatures, cool and unusual board games, etc.
As an adult, I've gone a reasonable way to keep that a secret. It's not that I'm truly ashamed of any of that--I mean, here I am, making an open admission of my dorkiness, so it's not that at all. It's also not that I am now the ridiculously cool guy I never was as a teen. I'd still consider myself pretty nerdy. Rather, I think I have a pretty good grasp on what society considers as normal, and what just falls too deep into subculture to be grasped by most people. I also perceive that the amount of energy it would take to explain it is just unreasonable. So it remains a part of my past, and, admittedly, a part of my present, when I can find a few friends with whom to share my closet nerdiness. They tend to be closet nerds, too.
My lovely girlfriend accepts my nerdiness, though she unabashedly teases me about it, which is fair enough. There's plenty about it to be teased, that's for sure. But my background in nerdhood sent tingles down my spine when she said that she was going to a meeting put on by the Society for Creative Anachronism here in Omaha. I'll use a nerdy allusion to make the notion clear--my spider-sense went off, full blast.
I had a brief run-in with the SCA when I was still in high school. As a nerd, the torch carried by the SCA for fun, medieval style, had an immense draw. Like a nerd to their lambent flame, I so badly wanted to attend a meeting that some of my friends were going to. My parents put their foot down, and I didn't go. But when my friends returned from the meeting I got the story, anyhow. They got to dress up in cool clothes, and there were fighting demonstrations, and all these people offered them homemade beer and wine, and--
--and that was it for me and the SCA. Now, I will be the first to admit to my rather conservative upbringing, but even given that, I am absolutely not keen on providing alcohol to minors. It's just not okay, and I don't care who you are. So it seemed umpteen times creepier that these older men and women would get my 15-year old friends dressed up in bosom-pushing outfits (which I heard all about), talk to them in some perverted hybrid of Middle English and Monty Python, and then encourage them to drink their own homemade liquor. I just got a fishy feeling about the whole thing.
Now whether or not that reflects on the broader organization, I cannot say, but it certainly has colored my perspective on the organization. So, though I didn't say as much to my girlfriend as I wanted to at the time, I even so had a few comments to dispense about what was likely to happen.
I should at this juncture mention the reason for my girlfriend's attendance at the meeting. She was not going because she had, after all the taunting about my nerdiness, developed a sudden urge to express her own inner dork. Rather, she has been working on some ideas for her Medieval Literature class, and has decided she wanted to do a photography project. One of her classmates, who apparently is into the SCA, told her about it as an opportunity to perhaps get some pictures that would fit into her period-style photographic reflections.
But after hours of strange goings-on, some weird painting, horrible play acting, and some other mischief, she returned from the meeting. Another friend took a lot of digital pictures, but she had spent money on her film, and wanted to use it on something worth the money to develop.
Now, I'm not certain I mean to formulate a categorical rejection of the SCA and the people who are involved in it. Chances are, however, that had I come across their webpage by just browsing, or by somone else's blog, or whatever, I would have likely commented on it anyway, past history or not.
There are ample reasons why. For example, I found out by using one of their maps that Nebraska is a part of the Calontir Kingdom, and further more, that Omaha is actually the Barony of the Lonely Tower (I wonder if that's a veiled reference to the First National Bank tower, the building that goes the longest way to defining Omaha's skyline). And the Calontir kingdom hosts something called the Lilies war. And that "The Lilies war is Calontir's way to show the Known World that wars can be fun."
No moth draws to this flame. But maybe if I change my mind I can talk to someone on their Curia Regis, like Chatelaine Lady Cerridwyn Eurgledde ferch Owain ap Bychan ap Gruffudd ap Llywellyn ap Siesyllt ap Meredudd, or Deborah Russell.
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